body painting photos

body painting has been around forthousands of years with the use of clay and other natural pigments often inceremonies and used by almost every tribe of people from around the worldand this in a way has led to the use of modern cosmetics and makeup but on amuch more conservative scale. since the 1960's there's been a revivalof body painting due in part of a changing attitude to how we view thebody in mainstream media from fine art painting to face painting, cospaintingto optical illusions in this video we'll look at the work of five incredible bodypainting artists. probably one of the most well-known artists working in thisarea is craig tracy from new orleans in

the united states. craig has been anartist from childhood from when he was given be creative freedom andencouragement to follow his passions by his parents who could at best bedescribed as working-class hippies. his early years were filled with drawingsand paintings but he was when he got an airbrush from his parents for his 15thbirthday it's set him on his way forward he was going to do for the next 20 years. craig said that it was when he paintedhis first face but it really clicked with him and later he realized he'dfallen in love with body painting though it took him a further 5 or 6 yearsbefore he took the subject seriously.

through using the internet he discoveredother artists for he admired and study their work and then developed his ownideas this led to his first series of 15 pieces called the "nature series" which was well received and some of the pieces became iconic works in their own rightand craig has become one of the leading artists in this field. craig uses a combination of backgroundimages and the models themselves to create an image were the model providesthe outline but otherwise almost disappears from the painting as in the tiger and the leopard from the "panted alive" series but the more we are amazed bythe quality of the work

work, the more mind-boggling thefact is that from the age of 3 craig has gradually been going blind with a degenerative eye condition which means he has almost no depth perception, is extremelyshort-sighted and has an astigmatism so his vision is distorted, none of which youwould believe when you see the quality of his work which is now described as thefirst fine art body painting in a world. where most of the things which seeonline have been digitally altered in some way or another or even completelydigitally created, japanese artist choo san (hikaru cho) and bring us body art which lookslike he's being created on a computer but in fact it is all hand painted withoutcomputer insight. cho san started her

drawing with doodles of eyes she drew on the back of our hands during study breaks as an art student at the musashino art university in tokyo japan. she became bored with all the digitally createdand altered imagery and decided to see how far she could go by painting herideas directly on to real models rather than photoshopping photos of them. the results of her body paintings using just acrylic paints are not only very realistic butalso rather unsettling sometimes with misplaced eyes and mouths, zippers, laces and buttoned up body parts. cho san now makes a living selling products with herinnovative designs on the web. nikki shelly came to prominence for herface painting after gaining a large

following on facebook her horrifyingpaintings have launched a 34 year old mum from rugby in united kingdom to alevel of fame she never believed possible. it all started out when she didsome halloween face painting for her kids, she received a lot of comments onhow good they were. as time went by the kids got bored with the face painting soshe started to paint her own face and it was then she discoveredhome newfound love of horror makeup. in many of the designs her face is barelyvisible underneath all the detail that is incredibly intricate with sharp menacing teeth and skin flakingoff in many of her works she's against a

black background which when combinedwith a blacked-out eyes, mouth and skull parts makes her look very scary indeed,much more than the halloween ones she did her kids. kay pike uses body paint totransform her model looks to that of comic book heroes and villains in whatshe called cospainting, a variation on the cosplay theme. the 28 year oldmodel and designer now has over 12,000 fans on instagram and now live streamsher creations from start to finish which can take up to 15 hours and cost up to$150 for just the paint alone. kay's work includes popular comic book charactersincluding superman, spider-man, iron man, robin from batman as well as cult figuresfrom the world of marvel and japanese

manga. originally a fan of dressing upfor cosplay events, kay discovered that she could use her artistic skills andtransform her appearance with paint instead of clothing. after posting theinitial results online she soon found she had thousands of followers. she onlystarted painting herself in december 2015 and it was after she did a facepainting version of "attack on titan", a character with a skinless body that itwent viral and she was invited to stream painting live online where she has beendoing a body painting live stream on twitchtv twice a week ever since. although kay has only been been practicing body painting for the past few months, she hasalways been interested in art. kay was a

fine art painter long before she triedher hand cospainting. she said that she's slowly been learning how to paintherself by trial and error as it was a much more difficult medium to work on as the body paint don't behave in at all the same way as canvaspaint do. after she finished painting a photoshoot to record it and uploads thepictures and videos to the internet. 29 year old german artist gesine marwedel creates both beautiful and yet terrifying pieces of art beforesometimes realistic or surreal and again using techniques that almost completely hide the model. although she is best known for her body art works, she studiedrehabilitation science from 2005 to 2008

and finished with a bachelor of artsgraduation. from 2009 to 2016 she was working as a speech therapist gesine believes that part can be therapeutic she has also published a book on howbody painting can be used as therapy though her full-time job is now as anart creative therapist in a center for autism therapie. thanks for watching andi hope you enjoyed the video if you did then don't forget to place thumbs up andsubscribe for more if you have any ideas for videos you like to see him pleaselet us know in the comments below